Up That Hill
by Habitations
Summary: There was only one comfort Edward found in the aftermath of his first kill, and that was the knowledge that he hadn't failed again. That he hadn't failed to protect.  oneshot, angst, Edward-centric, rated for gore and language, may continue with feedback


**AN:** Short, angsty oneshot. Events are based on the 2003 anime, but exactly when and where this fic takes place in the timeline is somewhat of an enigma. I hope you'll take it as it is and enjoy it regardless. Just a warning though, this is unbeta'd and may be a little rough around the edges.

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><p><em>"And if I only could,<em>  
><em>Make a deal with God,<em>  
><em>And get him to swap our places,<em>  
><em>Be running up that road,<em>  
><em>Be running up that hill,<em>  
><em>Be running up that building.<em>  
><em>If I only could.."<em>

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><p>Edward Elric killed his first man at the age of fourteen.<p>

And by killed, it would mean intentionally, directly, and by his own hands. Not indirectly, not by some strange situation of cause-and-effect, and in no way possibly able to pass as an accident.

Even though at the time he had few choices (none in any reality beside Edward's), and no one ever blamed him for it, it didn't change the fact that he had taken a life. No excuses of necessary evils, or the awareness that he'd knowingly subjected himself to any number of situations such as this- situations where blood and the cold stench of death would stain his own hands- the moment he submitted to being a dog if the military, would ever be just reason for the human life he had snuffed from the face of the planet.

There was only one comfort Edward found in the aftermath. One thing that kept him still grounded to Earth.

He hadn't failed again.

He hadn't failed to protect. And it was that memory of two little girls- one dead years ago because of him, and one who was still living now because of him- that allowed him to keep his sanity. Not quite moving on, but at the same time not shackled to the past as he had been for the past two years.

It had been a chilly, overcast day in which Edward found himself sprinting through the winding, maze-like back alleyways in Central.

He had been separated from Alphonse some ways back, but he couldn't bring himself to be concerned about it. Not when _she_ was in danger.

The girl had been snatched right out from under their noses. Taken away by a known serial killer who had a disturbing affinity for kidnapping little girls and, after getting his sick thrills by torturing them mercilessly for some hours, blowing them up from the inside and leaving them for some poor, unsuspecting civilian to discover.

The serial killer was an alchemist- a skilled one at that. And Edward knew that he had very little time in which to find the girl and save her.

He closely followed the small splatters of blood- her blood- dotting the pavement. Heart pounding, breathing heavily, blood roaring in his ears. With the heavy rush of adrenaline he was able to block out the searing pain in his muscles and ignore the incessant ache of his stumps as they reacted to the atmospheric pressure.

Somewhere in the back of his mind he registered that it was due to start raining any minute, and he pushed himself on, knowing that he would lose the trail with the rain, and if that happened then there was no hope.

Edward didn't know how long he had been running, moving as if the fires of hell licked at his heels and with a wrenching desperation as images of the girl's sweet, smiling face flashed before his eyes.

She couldn't die.

He couldn't let her die.

Finally he rounded a corner and the alley opened into an open space enclosed by high walls of grey concrete.

She was there.

Edward's feet were moving before he could even form another thought, and as such he didn't realise that he had just stepped into a lion's den. He didn't think about how she was struggling desperately against the ropes binding her wrists and ankles together, or how she was trying to tell him something around the gag in her mouth. He didn't think about the startling expression of pure horror in her wide, terrified eyes.

The only thought in Edward's mind at that moment was that she was alive and whole. Not splattered in an unrecognisable mess of blood and flesh on the wall. She was alive. He had made it in time.

When his automail arm suddenly exploded into thousands of glittering pieces and he was thrown against a concrete wall, Edward suddenly realised how selfish he was.

"Automail? Well, that's a shame." the man said in an honestly disappointed tone, "Metal isn't as exciting to blow up as flesh."

Before he could recover enough to move, Edward found cold, stony arms wrapping around his torso, binding him to the wall. The man smirked at him from where he was knelt some five feet away, hands pressed to the ground and the after sparks of the alchemical reaction flickering around his gloved hands.

"Now, now. I can't have you leaving when you've only just arrived, Mr. Elric. You came all this way, you might as well stay for the show."

"Go to hell!" Edward bit out, glaring with all the fire and rage within him, even as he felt ice chill him from the pit of his stomach and down his spine.

He was completely helpless. He knew it, and the man knew it just as well.

"Such language. Didn't your mother teach you any manners?" The man asked with a voice smoother than silk. Edward resisted the urge to retch.

"Shut up, you sick bastard. You have no right to talk about manners when you've been running around _murdering_ people!"

The man only chuckled in response, shaking his head as if he somehow pitied the boy. Edward gritted his teeth in anger at this, but was quickly startled into a rush of fear as the man suddenly turned and stepped toward him.

"It looks like I'm going to have to just teach you a lesson then." The arrays sewn into his gloves sparked as he prepared his alchemy, but he was cut short.

"Stop!" The girl screamed at the man, having somehow managed to work the gag out of her mouth. "Stop! Please stop! Please don't hurt him!"

She cried hysterically, tears running down her face. And to Edward's horror, the man stopped his advance and turned towards her, a wide grin twisting across his face.

"See now, Mr. Elric? Even little miss Lily here knows her manners." He said, the light cheer in his voice horribly out of place considering his expression and everything around him. "Such a sweet girl you are. And since you asked so nicely.."

The man now stepped towards the girl- Lily- instead, and a deep, freezing dread washed over Edward as he realised that he was about to watch her die. Brutally murdered at the hands of this madman who he, despite being adamantly atheist, just _knew_ had crawled straight out from the darkest pits of hell.

And there was nothing he could do to stop it.

Edward cursed himself in outrage. Cursed himself for being so infuriatingly stupid, for walking straight into a trap that should've been too obvious. For being caught off guard, for his automail being destroyed, for being so weak and allowing himself to get caught. For being in the same grisly situation as two years prior, and for once again being completely helpless.

_Nina..._

He was so goddamn selfish.

Lily had stopped struggling, stopped screaming. Her mind was trapped in a state of shock and she could do nothing more than stare in frozen terror at the man taking slow, almost leisurely steps towards her. He raised his gloved hands, flexing his fingers, arrays sparking up once more. The expression he was wearing was that of pure, insane, glee. Edward's whole body shook with tension and he twisted against the stone bonds.

"No- stop! Stop! Don't hurt her!" He found himself calling out to the man in a ragged, frenzied voice. Something in the back of his mind found a morbid humour in the irony of his words, which nearly perfectly echoed Lily's own pleas to keep him from harm only moments ago. The man seemed to not hear him, and if he did he didn't give any acknowledgment of it. No, he was concentrated on Lily. Concentrated on going in for the kill.

"Stop- please don't-!" Edward's voice caught in his throat as a familiar dead cold of metal pressed against the exposed skin of his lower back, right above his belt. He was startled for an instant before a memory hit him like a brick wall. The memory of watching the serial killer dash off with Lily slung over his shoulder, a mass of alchemised destruction falling behind him as he made his escape. How he had been just about to give chase when someone (Hawkeye? Havoc?) had shoved something into his hands, something he hadn't quite registered as he stuffed it into his waistband and dashed off. Too distracted by the pursuit and the agonising _need_ to save Lily to even give it a second thought.

The man took another step, and any previous morals or ideals of right and wrong disappeared from Edward's mind as he struggled and twisted painfully to move his flesh arm around to his back to wrap his fingers around the smooth handle sticking up. A new rush of adrenaline swept through him as well as heart-stopping terror as he watched the man get closer and closer to Lily, hands raised and ready to strike.

"Watch closely, Mr. Elric." He practically sang, standing directly in front of the helpless girl. "Her death will be the last thing you see before you die, and I am going to make sure that it's memorable enough to take with you into the afterlife."

The man crossed the last small distance between himself and Lily, hands aiming straight for her throat, and Edward nearly ripped his arm out of its socket as he all but tore his arm free of the stone binds.

He pointed the gun, and he fired.

The first bullet ripped through his shoulder and the man cried out as he stumbled backwards, his hand clutching at the wound which had almost immediately begun to bleed profusely. He stared at the other in blank, dumbfounded shock, mouth agape and eyes wide. A moment later he finally recognised the gun in Edward's outstretched hand and a deep, seething rage overtook the shock.

"Why you little-!" He started and made to lunge at him, but red suddenly bloomed over his stomach as bullet ripped through his gut. And then another through his leg, which brought him crumpling to his knees with a choked cry of pain.

Another two shots hit him in the chest, and he made a mangled, gurgling noise as blood rose up into his mouth.

The last bullet found it's mark above the man's right eye, followed instantly by an explosion of red behind him as it exited the back of his skull.

He fell forward on the ground with a sickly wet thud, and didn't move again.

The pistol slipped from Edward's shaking hand and clattered to the ground noisily just as the first few drops of the impending rainstorm fell on the pavement.

Edward didn't know how long he stayed there, arm still extended, just staring at the body laying in a heap not ten feet from him as a large pool of blood and gore slowly spread around it. He probably could have- would have- stayed there all night, sitting stock still in silence for hours, staring at the man he'd just killed.

Except he had nearly forgotten that he wasn't alone, and his heart nearly leapt from his ribcage when he heard a soft whimper to his right.

"... Lily.."

She was staring straight at him. Wide blue eyes, tears running down her cheeks, a fine spray of red covering her from head to toe on one side. Undoubtedly she had been caught in the messy aftermath of that last shot.

He didn't know when he began to move, how he had had managed to pull himself up and out of the binds, or how he'd managed to stumble over to her on legs that might as well have been made of jelly without falling flat on his face, but he did. And now Edward was crouched next to her, flesh hand tentatively wiping the spatters of blood off her face and brushing back locks of feather-soft auburn hair.

"Are you alright...?" he asked softly, voice cracking. She was visibly shaking, and his gut twisted when he immediately realised that she was afraid.

She was afraid of _him_.

Abruptly, he pulled his hand back and tightened his jaw. Of course she was afraid of him. He had just unloaded six bullets into a man and killed him right in front of her.

He'd killed a man.

Edward felt everything within him freeze as the reality of what he'd just done finally sunk in.

He'd just killed a man. A _human being_. He'd killed him without so much a second thought, or any feeling of remorse. Even now, it wasn't guilt clawing its way up through him.

No, not guilt. Horror.

The horror that it had only taken a few short minutes to completely shatter beliefs that he'd trusted and supported himself with all his life.

Wasn't it always him who preached that no one had the right to decide who lived and died? That there was always some other way? That everything didn't have to end with killing and death?

Edward realised now with a deep, cold, shock just how utterly naïve he'd been to have boasted those ideals with as much gusto as he had. He knew now with brutal clarity that it was one thing to be the person on the sidelines watching the battle, and something else entirely to be the one actually making the killing blow.

He wanted to fall to the ground and laugh until his lungs burst, he wanted to punch the wall until his knuckles shattered, he wanted to scream until his throat bled. These things always happened to him, and Edward thought he probably should just start expecting everything that kept his life from completely slipping out from beneath him to go to shit eventually.

Maybe that was another punishment set upon him by the Gate. That he was cursed with terrifyingly bad luck and wouldn't know the comfort of stability ever again.

He was brought out of his thoughts when he felt small, soft hands wiping gently at his cheeks, and he raised his head to see Lily kneeling in front of him. Her wrists and ankles were still bound, and Edward instantly felt a hot spear of guilt that he hadn't undone them, or even attended to the undoubtedly traumatised girl like he should've been. And he would've done so then, except his vision was blurring and there was a strange, warm, wetness on his cheeks that wasn't from the rain, and Lily seemed determined to wipe it away.

"Don't cry, big brother..." He heard her say softly, hiccuping a little. "Don't cry..."

Then she smiled at him, and Edward physically felt his heart breaking.

_Nina..._

"I'm so sorry..." he whispered, closing his eyes.

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><p><strong>AN: <strong>I purposely skimped on details involving the all important who, what, where, why, and how. Whether or not this was a smart decision is still unknown.

Considering expanding this into a two-shot or beyond. Maybe, maybe not. I won't make any promises.

**Please R&R~**


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